Hoodwinked

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.
They look really surprised to be in a movie.

"Let's just say that if a tree falls in the forest you'll get three stories: yours, mine, and the tree's."

—Inspector Nicky Flippers

Hoodwinked is an All CGI Cartoon movie released in 2005 that parodies the Little Red Riding Hood fairy tale. Possibly inspired by Shrek, the movie is an Urban Fantasy retelling, using a Rashomon-style interrogation set-up to tell the story, with Alternate Character Interpretation for all of the tale's characters.

The movie starts with the police arresting everybody at Granny's House -- the Wolf, the Woodsman, Granny, and even Red Riding Hood -- and interrogating them separately to find out what happened. Each then narrates events as he or she saw them happen.

A sequel titled Hoodwinked Too: Hood Versus Evil, in which the Wolf and Red Riding Hood team up to rescue Hansel and Gretel, was released in April 2011 after several years in Development Hell.

Tropes used in Hoodwinked include:
  • Adaptation Expansion
  • All-Star Cast
  • Alternative Foreign Theme Song: Has its own Japanese theme song.
  • Anything But That: "Not prison! Not for a cute little bunny rabbit!"
  • Aside Glance: Wolf, after Twitchy's declaration that he doesn't drink coffee.
    • Also Red, when Jabeth denies having spoken normally at one point.
    • Also Twitchy gives the camera a pleased look when he hears his voice played back at quarter-speed on a recorder
  • Avoid the Dreaded G Rating: A writer for Focus on the Family's Plugged In magazine said the film could have squeaked by with a "G" rating. Let me reiterate that: Focus on the Family said the content rating on a movie was too strict.
  • Badass Grandma: Granny. She fights in cage matches, fer cryin' out loud.
    • And was the champion!
  • Beware the Nice Ones: Who would ever suspect little Boingo?
  • Big Eater: The Three Little Pigs, who consume a majority of the evidence.
  • Blinding Camera Flash: Happens accidentally.
  • Bound and Gagged: First Granny (She wound up tangled in her own parachute's cords) and later Red (as a prisoner of Boingo.)
  • Brick Joke: The first part of the movie, when the four protagonists tell their sides of the story, is essentially a long succession of these. Little details that seem bizarre or out-of-place are eventually shown in their full context.
  • Bring It: During the fight scene in the villain's lair, the villain does the "bring it" gesture. With his ear.
    • Of course, there's also Grandma's line at the end: "Bring it, honey."
  • Caffeine Bullet Time: used by Twitchy at one point.
  • Chekhov's Gun: Coffee.
  • Completely Missing the Point:

"Sweet tea and cookies! We got to do something."
"I know. The song was catchy, but the choreography was terrible."

Boingo: I'm gonna need a lot of real estate down the mountain, so I've gotta blow the competition away. Oh, and that's not a metaphor. We've literally got to blow them away. OK?
Red: Yeah, I got it.

  • Dynamite Candle: "Dee-na-mee-tay. Must be Italian." (A Christmas Story Shout-Out?)
  • Easter Egg: Literally.
  • Embarrassing Tattoo: Sort of. On Granny of all people. Of course.
  • Everybody Was Kung-Fu Fighting: And handled much less clunkily than the way it was handled in the Shrek franchise; the prize for the most impressive and spectacular Martial Artists in the film goes to Boingo the Easter Bunny, whose utilizes his EARS as the primary weapon of his highly effective personal style of Martial Arts.
  • Everythings Nuttier With Squirrels: Twitchy, natch.
  • Evil Laugh: Boingo.
  • Exactly What It Says on the Tin: "It's Unlawfully Delicious!"
  • Family-Friendly Firearms: During the ski battle, the combatants fire snowballs at each other.
  • Feather Fingers: Boingo's ears, though not quite to the point of Prehensile Hair
  • Foreshadowing: If you look carefully during the scene where Red is in the minecart with Japeth and they go down the drop, you can see them pass by Wolf and Twitchy in their own minecart. And when the Wolf tells his story, you can see Red and Japeth dropping in the background. There are tons of these in the movie that would be overlooked until another character's point of view is told.
    • Also, the expression on Boingo's face after Red falls off the cable car. You think he's horrified at Red falling, or angry at himself. You'd be wrong.
    • When Boingo talks to Wolf, he is oddly unconcerned if Red is alright.
  • Fractured Fairy Tale
  • Friend to All Living Things: Parodied: Red "drives" a flock of hummingbirds over a river without a license, according to Flippers. The wolf also accounts that this is creepy.
  • Frogs and Toads: Inspector Nicky Flippers.
  • Furry Confusion: Subverted: Flippers seems to walk a non-anthropomorphic dog into the crime scene, but he turns out just to be the notary.
  • Furry Fandom: There's a minor human character who wears a fursuit. The wolf even refers to him as "my furry friend."
    • And, unusually for a mainstream work, he is never mentioned as being the slightest bit weird. Of course, given the setting they're in...
    • Furries aren't widely known outside the internet or CSI: Miami, so crowbarring in a joke about them would be a bit redundant.
  • Gosh Dang It to Heck: "What the schnitzel?"
  • Half-Dressed Cartoon Animal: Wolf and Twitchy.
  • Hair-Raising Hare: Boingo.
  • Heli Critter: Japeth the goat. This is how he survives the mine car crash.
  • Hidden Depths: Because the movie teaches us not to judge a book by its cover, all four of the characters interviewed are revealed to have these.
    • Red is revealed to have dreams of leaving the Big Bad Forest by going on an adventure.
    • Wolf (who was thought to be the Goody Bandit) turns out to be a reporter who is trying to catch the Goody Bandit. He just thought Red was the Goody Bandit.
    • Kirk Kirkendall, who was accused of breaking and entering, is revealed to have crashed through the window completely by accident, and is a loving man who gives schnitzel to children.
    • Granny Puckett is revealed to be a daredevil…much to Red’s dismay, as she had been lying to her the whole time.
  • How We Got Here
  • Hypocrite: Granny Puckett tells Red that a trip up the mountain is much too dangerous for a young girl…even though she plans to go up the mountain herself.
  • Gilligan Cut: In the ending, when Japeth is shown delivering goodies.
  • Ice Cream Koan: Flippers.

Chief: Boy, you are just full of those, aren't ya.

Red: Huh, what's this?
Granny: Oh, it says "Worlds Greatest Grandma."
Red: Grandma, I can read. It says "Battle of the Iron Cage Gladiators."
Granny: Now, dear, if there are two things I don't do, it's lie, and play extreme sports.

Goodie Bandit: And Keith!... Darnit, change your name. Please? That's not scary, and I'm embarrassed to say it. "Boris." Try that. *Keith storms off* Keith, you know. Oh... watch out for Keith!

The sequel contains examples of:

Granny: "Why are you telling me all this? I was there."

Verushka: "I'm tired of being Number Two! I feel like a big. Steaming. Pile of Number Two!

  • Half-Dressed Cartoon Animal: Wolf gets retconned into wearing a pair of jeans, so as to make Twitchy be the source of "not wearing any pants" jokes.
  • Instant Knots: Red's belt, particularly in the opening.
  • Laser Hallway: Part of Granny's escape, complete with flour being used to reveal the beams and the acrobatic bypass of the lasers.
  • Laughably Evil: Hansel and Gretel, yes they're Complete Monsters, but they're so ridiculously over-the-top about being evil that it's NOT to laugh at them
  • Medium Awareness:

Twitchy: The special effects were spectacular!

Boingo: (deep raspy voice) Hello, Clarice.
Red: Who's Clarice?
Boingo: (normal voice) The cleaning lady. You just missed her.

Granny: Wolf, you think you can handle a bike like this?
Wolf: Sure, l think l could if l had to. I went through my bad boy phase. Road a bike, greased my hair back, lived over Richie Cunningham's garage, water-skied over a shark tank. Those were some happy days.

Gretel: You've been hoodwinked, too!

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